Educated Savage Photography

I went out hunting for locations for my beautiful new package debuting soon! In the meantime, I took some pictures of what I found! Enjoy!

So, my projects are going really great! I can’t wait until I can share some of the pictures with you guys – I think they just came out absolutely gorgeous! Just waiting on my editors to get back to me about them.

In other news, I had a friend come out and visit for a few days and we took a trip up to Mount Lemmon on a quest for fudge and I got some neato pictures! There was snow up on the mountain and it even started snowing while we were up there! So exciting!

Also, we went to her son’s football game where he played absolutely awesome AND I managed to get a couple pictures! Check them out!

So, the winner of my FREE pet portraiture drawing was Taryn and I got to meet her and the lovely Ladyvsmothra on Tuesday this week. We had so much fun – they are both so lovely and Lady is a silly little girl! Lady tried to hide behind her mama until the very end of our shoot when she finally started relaxing, but we were able to get some sweet shots of her anyways.

My Beautiful Little Girl, Arwen

Also on my portrait sessions page, you may notice that a professional make up artist is now available for your portraits for an additional $30! This is a steal – normally make up artists charge $50 and upward for each “look!”

One thing I want to mention – ’tis the time for Holiday Cards! What’s better than sending your family up north or back east a beautiful photo of you and your family, in t-shirts and jeans, out in the beautiful sunlight with vibrant green plant life around you, reminding them of the freezing cold snow just outside their doors?

Another announcement: I now have a mailing list! People on the mailing list will get information about packages, events, and news before anyone else does. This gives them a time advantage when it comes to booking sessions, so consider signing up. I promise not to spam you and emails will arrive fairly infrequently.

Lastly, I’m happy to announce that I am now able to take credit and debit card payments on site! No longer will you have to bring cash (exact change, no less!) with you to cover your session! This should make it easier on everyone – I know, I don’t carry cash around with me.

That’s it for tonight! I’m sure I’ve missed something and I’ll try to include it in tomorrow’s news. Hope you’re all doing well! If you have any questions, as always, contact me here or leave me a comment!

I do a lot of reading about industry standards, best practices, technical specifications, and general how-to-be-even-better kind of stuff. And it fascinates me that in all this reading, the authors, teachers, lecturers, and writers always include, as an aside that they quickly move on from, a comment about how no matter what equipment you have, if you don’t have The Eye, forget it. That’s all they say about that. But it’s generally held to be true that if you have The Eye, you could be using a cell phone camera and make beautiful art.

How do you know when you have The Eye? It’s light. All of vision is based on light and when you have The Eye you area able to see the light. You’re able to tell when the sun is casting beautiful golden light or when it’s casting a calming blue tone or when it’s close to white. You’re able to tell when you light is hard and stark or when it’s buttery soft and rolls around objects. You’re able to tell which objects are reflecting the light falling on them and how much. It’s a pretty amazing thing. Sometimes I sit in my office and just watch the light change outside my window. It changes in color and texture and thickness. In the morning it starts out sweet and thick, like honey, and just kind of rolls across the landscape, but becomes lighter and lighter as the sun rises. In the evening, it starts out a little on the blue side, then rolls into a golden color, again becoming like honey. On cloudy days it’s thin and light, and with the right clouds it’s almost white, but mostly blue.

And more than anything else, when you have The Eye, you know how to make your camera perceive light in the same way that the human eye does. You’re able to see the light, use it, shape it, mold it. And then there are things like composition, dynamism, interest, and other artistic aspects that come with The Eye.

How can you tell if the photographer you’re looking for has The Eye? Look for emotion, feeling, and story telling, even in their every day portraiture. Is it just a stark image of a person? Or do you get a sense of personality and feeling from them? Can you connect? Good photographs provoke and emotional response and that is what you’re looking for.

I’m proud to announce that I am now offering my photography services in Tucson, Arizona in addition to Casa Grande! I moved from Tucson a couple years ago, but I miss shooting portraiture at beautiful Reid Park right on Speedway. So, I’ve decided to allow my creative side and home-sickness to bring me back to Tucson for more beautiful portraits!

I prefer shooting at Reid Park because there is such a diversity in backdrops and is such a beautiful landscape. Plus, there’s a wonderful rose garden! Not to mention that the lighting always seems to be perfect, no matter what time of day (although nothing beats evening light).

Portrait sessions are available during the week or on the weekends after 12 o’clock noon. Please visit my Portrait Session page for more information.

By the way – it’s been pretty overcast lately, which is actually wonderful lighting for outdoor portraits! Sunlight is marvelous, but overcast is so soft and flattering.

There’s a tree in my back yard, I have no idea what it is, but it just started blooming a couple days ago! And it’s November! What a strange little tree – and I’ve never seen it bloom before, either. But the flowers are a lovely yellow and grow in clusters. There was a bee flying around them, but, unfortunately, I was not able to catch him. I did catch this other little critter, but he seems to have come out a big grainy. Dang wind! LOL

I had a little photo-taking walk today – just shooting mundane things around my neighborhood. Got some pretty decent shots, though, so I am pleased.